Why Didn't People Like This Game?

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I guess a way to put my question more succinctly would be: if you were the developer of this game, what would you have done differently in order to improve it?

Challenge accepted!

-Remove QTEs-Have one long and interesting campaign.-Less focus on co-op play and more focus on a solid single-player experience.(That does not mean co-op should not be in the game.)-Make Mercenaries fun to play like it was in RE5.(Meaning eachcostume has it's own loadout and each character has their own melee moves. Less emphasis on countering everything and more emphasis on just beating the s*** out of the enemies.)-Remove Stamina Gauge-Have Replay Value(RE4 and RE5 allowed you to play the game with any set of weapons or costume you wanted. RE6 does neither.)-Remove Skill System

I guess a way to put my question more succinctly would be: if you were the developer of this game, what would you have done differently in order to improve it?

Alrighty then (mine are mostly story reasons, but hey when in Rome)

1: Make Jake the lead protagonist of Chris' campaign:

For a character as young as he is I feel like he should have been the focus on that campaign. With Chris we have literally seen his conflict from beginning to end, Everything that was driving him hit its focal point in RE5 and was ultimately resolved by Wesker's death, Their is no deep and personally meaningful reason for him to fight so what is the point of him fighting? The more interesting choice would have been Chris turning into the reasoning figure, and on top of it all it would make sense. With all of the experience that he has had it would be a perfect character type for him at this point, Just read these two sentences aloud and see which one sounds like a more constructive story

A) Young military officer botches mission and seeks revenge with the guidance of a Superior who has suffered the same experience.

B) Old military officer despite his years of experience botches a mission and seeks revenge with a doubting young officer at his side.

Now does this mean that I think the story line B is bad? No, but for this type of story you should introduce this new character and then have a relationship build up and give them some form of equality, before you make this new kid a crutch for your aging protagonist.

2: Intro Level:

I thought it was interesting at first and it sucked me into the world of the game, however when that moment was revisited it felt different. Why? Well to me it was the lack of risk, In the intro stage you had to save Helena's ( or whatever's) Life in a clever little "How To Play" moment. But when that moment is revisited it just gets thrown away, No raising stakes, No nothing, Just "Hey you remember that big moment at the start of the game? Well were going to just skip that herp derp."

My change would have been to actually make the intro stage occur just before Leon's story (time line wise) Show him walking through the universities campus during the day. This way it is much more dramatic and unnerving when the whole world goes bad. It also gives a chance for Leon's partner to be properly introduced, and give the story some build, Instead of just dropping you off in the middle of everything. A little moment of peace could also help out with my third point.

3: Chris and Leon's Relationship:

Well this is the moment fans have been wanting since the beginning of the Leon vs Chris debate. And capcom just throws it away. You get to that big fight and somehow I keep asking myself "Why should I care?" And if you look at the story up to that point there is no reason you should. Why, you may ask? Again because their was no build to this moment at all. Here is a pretty accurate description of what this moment was

Leon: Sup

Chris: Sup, Imma kill ada

Leon: Dont bro

Chris: Auuugh fine

Leon: Cool bro, Peace

Chris: Peace.

And to be honest, this could have been fixed with just one bit of diolouge At some point in Leon's story just have him say

By the way I heard Chris was operating in china

H: Who?

L: Chris Redfield. I met his little sister in Raccoon city, If anything him being there is a good thing. I honestly cant think of a man more capable to handle whatever hell broke loose over there.

Boom. Instant relationship, Which makes that moment much more powerful when they are forced to face off.

/ Rant.

GOLF IS LIFE If you believe in Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it, put this in your sig

100% agreed. segments like the heli barely doding the train and crashing through a building is a bit insane, and the boss battles (mostly simmons) are annoyances, but the gameplay was a step above the other res.

-First and foremost, the game is terrible about jerking control away from the player on a frequent basis. QTEs, camera jerks to show you obvious details, and plenty of short cutscenes all disrupt the flow of the game.

And no, QTEs are BS. They serve no purpose other than adding a fail condition to watching cutscenes which forces you to watch the cutscene some more. It's not fun, it doesn't force the player to exhibit any particular skill or understanding of the game's nuances, it's merely a forced impediment to game flow that adds nothing to the enjoyment of the game.

-The cover system makes fighting tedious. I don't care if it 'makes sense' because you're fighting enemies with guns, the resultant gameplay has a number of negative impacts on other design facets:

Firstly, the enemy design is undercut by the cover-based gameplay. The enemy mutations are less dangerous than the constant suppressing fire that punishes you for moving in the open with instant knockdown. It creates the effect that you're not fighting monsters, you're just fighting soldiers with some extra surprises thrown in. The extensive mutation system becomes a frivolous footnote; I am happy when I force a mutation because that's one less J'avo with a gun to hide from, that's about it.

Secondly, the map design suffers for having to accommodate the cover system. Waist-high fences litter the landscape for no other purpose, and so many of the game's environs have no interactivity or purpose other than being more corridors for you to shoot your way through. The map design aided the atmosphere of the game in RE4; for example, the claustrophobic halls where you first encounter the Regeneradores or the watery basement of the Castle where you heard the Novistadores more than saw them.

Finally, the system disrupts the game's already-bad pacing still further by punishing you for moving in the open. Yes, that's the point of a 'cover system', and that's exactly why I wish they hadn't gone with one for this game. It doesn't flow well, it's frustrating in conjunction with the game AI, and slowing the game down with stop-and-pop is a bad idea when you've already saturated it with grapple mechanics, QTEs, and story cutscenes.

-First off, yes, the plot is important. No, the game doesn't get a pass for being stupid just because RE's "always been cheesy", that's no reason to encourage contrivance of this magnitude. This game takes previous conventions of the series and stretches them so far they break:

Number one with a bullet on my list is enemies that just don't die. Yes, it worked for Nemesis, yes, I was very happy to see them give the post-RE4 games a Nemesis expy. But they went overboard with the premise, to the extent that it's not shocking, surprising, or anything but utterly tedious to see an enemy you killed 3 times already pop back up again later. The value of the convention has been stamped out of it. Ubistvo won't stay dead, Ustanak of course keeps coming back, and friggin' Simmons abuses the convention to the extent he teleports up the Quad Tower just to make his "surprise, I'm not dead" reappearance. Again and again. It's been beaten to death in this game.

Number two, the setpieces seem to just exist so the game can have setpieces. Some of them are ridiculous, like the tank and the statue. Some of them are just annoyingly tedious, like waiting for a helicopter to stop flying way the hell out of range so you can grenade it to death. It's not like past games haven't had similar crap in them (Salazar statue, for example), but things like the besieged shack in RE4 actually commanded your adrenaline. There were "oh ****" moments, not "oh great" moments.

Number three, the plot has entirely given up even being relevant to the game. All the important details of the game's plot don't exist outside the files you get for shooting bonus emblems. They sucked out SO MUCH of the game's interesting details and atmosphere and shoved it into some menu you access outside the campaign. All you get in-game is cutscenes that come off as disconnected and contrived because you know nothing of any backstory, anything going on behind the scenes, and basically why any of the crap you're going through is actually happening. It makes the game feel even flatter. The reason they did it this way? They were afraid of pacing issues.

-The game makes no attempt at establishing atmosphere through gameplay; it only tries to build the world visually, through cutscenes with no surrounding plot to prop them up or QTEs to frustrate you for daring to be absorbed in what's happening on screen. Or sometimes just out of the blue. There are some rare moments, I admit. The beginning of Leon's campaign certainly tries. I enjoyed facing Carla on the carrier as Ada. But on the whole, the game just gives you a situation and hopes you'll get into it, while simultaneously trying its damndest to drag you out of it with the aforementioned flaws.

I could probably go on and on as I think of issues to present, but these leapt out at me today on revisiting the game. It's not total trash, no. There's stuff to like about it. But the "RE's been cheesy" line of thought is unprincipled, passive complicity with a mentality that will continue to introduce annoying features and bad design into games with the intention of lowest common denominator appeal unless people complain, and loudly at that.

But I liked this games, well let's say I liked the campaign, the story of the game (not that it was very well written as stated before, but i liked it). More than I liked RE5. seems I am one of the only ones to think so and I don't exactly know why, maybe the whole setting of the fifth being (in my eyes) merely a clone of the fourth with more action and less horror, mostly played in bright daylight and Chris being the player's character. I don't like Chris.

So I liked Chris' part of RE6 least. Not to forget it being an obvious COD clone most of the time. -.-'

Maybe I liked it because of the way the seperate ways mix and meet up and you can see something you already played from a different perspective. I always liked that not only in games.

And I liked it that Leon and Ada played a major role again. But that was it.

What I didn't like:

Well as I said I think Chris' campaign part was just there to please the die-hard-shooter-fans. They could have omitted it entirely without altering the other campaigns in any major way. The last part of rescuing Jake and Sherry form the underwater base could have been done by Ada as well.

And (as someone else wrote before) the highly anticipated first meeting between Leon and Chris was a "And that was it...?" moment. They've been in this since '98 both and meet for the first time 15 years later only to have a forgettable 3 minute chat and a little "Who's the better martial artist"-fight before. Lame. There were so many boss battles in this game, but they didn't manage to make one of the with Leon and Chris fighting next to each other...

Which brings me to the bosses. Ok, as we are already used to: they are big, they are bad, they mutate a zillion times. But this them they are really pushing it. And they are coming back again and again and again. I actually liked it with Ustanak, maybe because I never played RE3 so I don't have the direct Nemesis comparison, but Simmons? Maaaan... Maybe I would've liked it as well, when it hasn't been nearly the entire fifth Leon level being just the boss battle against Simmons... But it's not the only level. In the end also the fourth level is just a sequence of boss battles: Lepo... (as it isn't allawed for it containing an evil word -.-') on the plane, QTE, Ustanak on the ground, short sequence with Rasklapanje, hmm we didn't have a boss fight in a while: fight Simmons! Bosses are nothing special anymore in this game.

Speaking of bosses: Haos was a pain in the ass. Especially when playin as Piers. And as I did 99% of the time: as single player in Singleplayer mode. You know what I mean? Co-op ok. Best when you have a story and campaign on its own that was designed for two players cooperating (as the name implies). But I only saw this once in my personal gaming history. Most of the time it is like in RE6. Make a SP that a second player can join as well. Yippie... Now here we have the situation that the developers were so intrigued that the couldn't decide what to do and so we have a "Singleplayer" mode by name only but that isn't a REAL co-op mode either. You have a partner all the time. But playin with the AI is sometimes good sometimes bad. The hordes of enemies is clearly designed for two human players cleverly spliting up the enemies, not one player overwhelmed by enemies with an AI standing beside making "peng-peng" for alibi's sake... Then again, your AI partner seems unable to die (at least when I played) no matter what the enemies throw at him. With a human partner there can be situations where one only runs to the other to revive and vice versa all the time...

Then the bosses (again). For example: have Helena as AI partner and I swear it is impossible to die while being Leon and swimming away from Brzak. I read a lot of players who were infuriated by this part when playing co-op. Other side of the medallion: The already mentioned Haos. Piers' lightning attack is crap. Even the single shot is way to inaccurate for an enemy that is constantly moving around. At least in my opinion. And since you are the player character Haos is most of the time facing und moving towards you. So bit difficult to reach the weak spots on his back. And what the Chris AI is doing meanwhile? Shooting around with the weakest possible weapon, gettin a lucky hit from time to time. Yeah! Very balanced gameplay...

I've bought every main RE game at or around launch. The demo and the internet convinced me to wait on RE 6. For me, the thing that's turning me off to RE (and many other modern games) are QTEs. I swear it's a conspiracy to kill controller analog sticks so we have to shell out 50 bucks for a new one every year or 2. Resident Evil 6 is one of the bggest QTE offenders ever.

That being said, I recently picked up the archives edition on the cheap, mainly for the basically free Code Veronica, but I did end up enjoying RE6 a lot. I still pine away for the atmospheric dread of the early games, but RE6 isn't as bad as it's rep.

- QTE overload. I couldn't enjoy a cutscene because I'd be focused on responding to these by their droves.

- The game yanks control from you to make you look at something or make you run away from something. It does it all too often.

- Having a partner isn't scary. It's just not. This game isn't that scary when you have a yappy partner pulling you out of the immersion every ten seconds. Feeling scared? Just stand by them. Yeah. Horror? Hah.

- Inventory system is a mess. Cover system is rubbish, inconsistent and clunky.

- The pace is off. Some fights either go on for too long or there's too long without one. I felt this was especially present in this game.

- Bad script. I know it's Resident Evil, but if you're going to have so many cutscenes, make the dialogue better.

What's especially annoying is that all of these issues have been highlighted by critics and fans alike in other games over and over and over. I've never heard a positive comment about the typical QTE, or invisible walls, or yanking control from the player, yet this game does all of these things all the time. Are the developers so self-absorbed? Do they not pay attention to the industry in which they're designing big budget games? Why the hell not?